Smart Believers as the Best Investors

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

One of the things believers and submitters quite often forget to appreciate is the fact that the believers—especially the smart believers, let’s qualify the smart believers—are the best investors. Better than the smart disbelievers and better than the non-smart believers. So basically, smart believers are the best investors. And this is because the same brain which managed to realize—and I’m talking in the long run, even in this earth, in the long run on this earth and the next world—of course one day someone might be a better investor, another day someone else, but in the long run submitters, especially the smart submitters are the best investors.

It’s the same attitude, the same beliefs, the same way of thinking, the same logic which they have applied and realized that the best investment is doing things in this world for huge returns on investment for the next world. Even if they don’t constantly think about that, when they think into something similar, it’s going to be more towards that rather than towards a really bad investment.

I think this is important for especially the non-smart submitters, but also for submitters in general, to realize that the smart believers are the best investors in the long run. I just want to go quickly over what I think are the best investments, but that’s not the topic of the project. I want to introduce something practical today. God willing, we can talk about that in more detail another day.

Of course, the best investment is what God tells us in the Quran, like giving up this life for the next life. There’s no better investment than that for the next world and this world.

Why Believers Don’t Always Appear Wealthy

Before I go on to list some good investments, let me first say: why doesn’t it always look like the smart believers are the best investors?

It doesn’t look like that because people don’t all start in the same place. Especially the believers in a non-believing community, start either from zero, from a very low budget, or from negative, from a loan. Basically, if their parents were bad—probably the parents were alcoholics, or maybe their parents took too many loans, or whatever the situation in which they found themselves—it was not a good start. They don’t have a good start typically, which looks like they are not good investors.

However, if you look at what they got from their parents and what in the end they left for their children, you’ll realize that actually in the long run, during the whole life, they had a much better return on investment than the disbelievers for less work. So let’s keep that in mind. Wealth is not important; it has never been important in this world except for the fools who think that it is. And despite the fact that they are not the most wealthy, they have the best return on investment. Basically, they produce the most out of what they were given.

Unfortunately, a lot of people actually look like they’re not good business people or good investors, especially because they start with negative. First, they have to learn how not to lose, which is not to lose through loans, not to lose there, not to lose there. So they might start thinking too conservatively, meaning how not to lose or how to save the money. Then eventually, if a disbeliever had that habit, he would probably do it even worse if he had to learn how not to lose. By the time they get enough money to start to win, it’s probably towards the end of their life.

Owning Cows: One of the Best investments

So I’ve given myself the liberty to say what I think the best investments are. Of course the best investment is working in this world for the next world. There’s no better return on investment ever. Like that’s a million percent, 100,000 percent, whatever number you want to give, a very big number, one trillion percent; those are really big investments. It’s not 10 percent, 5 percent. It’s huge, huge return on investment. But the next investment in this world—and this might surprise people—is just owning cows. Just if someone just owns cows, that’s probably the next best return on investment in this world. Of course, actually having children is the next best one, but it’s not culturally correct or politically correct to say that children are an investment in this world. So let’s kind of forget about that. But the next, let’s say, the best investment within what they categorize as investments today is just owning cows. However, that’s sort of not fully true anymore in the modern world. It used to be for thousands of years. Whoever had more cows, was a better investor. Especially if they knew how to multiply them.

The best investment in this world after that, is simply owning cows. It’s a very good investment because they multiply. You can own cars, you can own apartments, they don’t multiply themselves. Cows just multiply themselves, and they can be eaten and they can be used for milk, and so they just multiply. However, because in today’s world you cannot really own cows legally, you have to have lots of land, and much has been taken by the governments or by whatever, it has not made it as good of an investment. It probably has brought it back to being as good as the other investments. So, owning cows is not necessarily the best investment anymore. It is still up there, it’s still a good investment, but I am not sure. But I think it is probably average, a little bit more than average.

The reason for that is too many diseases have been introduced, too many requirements about how you should manage them, and there are lots of laws about farming and all of that, so that kind of makes it not as good of an investment. But it is still a very good investment. I don’t think any of us are going to really own cows, maybe someone wants to do it, it is fine—but it is really hard. It looks like it is a very good investment until you introduce the diseases, which are a modern problem. The way they raise the cows today, because they live so close together, the diseases can spread much easier, so it is not as good of an investment anymore.

Beat the Stocks: Introducing a Practical Project

The best one, I would say after that, is just stocks—just buying stocks. And you don’t really have to think a lot. If you don’t know stocks, you can just buy the Dow Jones or NASDAQ (Stock Indexes). It is a group of stocks of some of the best stocks; you don’t have to analyze so much. Just buy stocks. By the way, the word ‘stock’ and ‘cow’ (i.e. stocks of cows) were kind of similar in the past, just owning lots of cows. And the word ‘stock’ and ‘cow’ kind of stem from a similar environment.

In today’s world, it is really hard to beat stocks. So typically, if I have any money, I will just keep them in stocks. Bitcoin was for a short while, maybe AI was for a short while. Probably not anymore. But in the long run, it is just owning stocks—that is the best investment. Now, I am talking about the investment in the modern world—this world. Of course, we spoke about the two better ones, which are not really the topic of this day.

Now recently, I think I came up with an idea which can beat stocks by a little bit, maybe by much. I think this idea can beat stocks if there is enough interest from The Submitters. Now, I am not going to give any guarantees that this is going to beat the stocks, but I think I myself would put the money in here because I think it can beat the stocks as an investment.

What I’m introducing today is an idea for an investment. Don’t think of it as some sort of very religious topic. Of course, it’s connected with religion, but I want you to see it from the perspective of, “How is this a good investment for me? How am I going to win from it?” Which is fine; it’s fine to look at it like that.

So, I want to introduce what I think in the near future—not for all cases, but for people who participate, if we do it right—of course, we can sort of beat the stocks by a little bit. I don’t know how much ‘little bit’ means; does it mean like a lot? Let us say I believe it is going to beat stocks if we invest right and if enough people are interested. And of course, the time might not be right. It might be too early. We don’t have to do it now, we can do it later, whenever the time comes, but I think it is an investment which beats the stocks.

The Submitter’s Apartment Project: Floor Plans & Structure

I want to introduce a project which I call the Submitter’s Apartment Project. The idea is that we could build an apartment building. I don’t want to go too much into detail why this type—anyone can have different ideas. I’ve thought about this a long time, and I came up with something which meets a lot of criteria.

• What is this project?

The idea is that we invest, or buy, or build—of course, we’re going to build them and then own them, but other submitters can buy them after they are built, depending on how they want to invest in it.

Let me introduce the starting idea, because it’s modifiable. We can change it a little bit. I’m open to that depending on how people are interested and things like that, but I’m just going to introduce the project as I see it right now. It’s probably going to change a little bit or maybe a lot, I don’t know.

Here’s the idea: we build an apartment building which submitters can share. Of course, we would have to employ architects and stuff like that to do the whole thing. I’m just representing it in its raw form, without engaging anyone else, just as I did it in Excel.

This is the plan, God willing, if people want to participate: we can build an apartment building which would be, in this case, about 15 meters by 14 meters. Here we have the stairs, and here we have one apartment which is 2+1. 2+1 means two bedrooms and a living room, and the living room includes the kitchen. Of course, every apartment has a bathroom.

Then we have another apartment here, which is 3+1, which means three bedrooms, one living room. Imagine this is the entrance area, stairs, one door, the other door.

Now, why did I come up with three floors versus four floors? Because the idea was to avoid elevators. Usually, once you build a building higher than that, you will have to build elevators, and that requires regulations, and it’s expensive and things like that. So I was trying to avoid elevators. Plus, it’s simple to manage; you don’t have to employ an external company and things like that.

This is the first floor. The second floor will be kind of similar. By the way, we can switch the floors. The first floor could have been the third floor. I’m flexible about this. Depending on the demand of what people want to do or what they are interested in, let’s say we can turn this 3+1 into a 2+1 and a studio; we can separate this. Of course, the architects would do this, but first I’m just presenting an initial draft.

Then here in the second floor, there’s another apartment. Once you climb to the third floor, we have some smaller apartments. These could also be on the first floor depending on how we decide in the end. Here’s another apartment, 1+1. Another apartment, 1+1. 1+1 means just one bedroom, which would be suitable for a couple who doesn’t have kids yet; they just have one bedroom and a living room. Here, another 0+1 is pretty much what they call a studio apartment, meaning that it’s all one area. It’s almost like a hotel room, a little bit bigger, but with a kitchen, and that’s it. And here’s another one like that.

Basically, this whole building has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8—if we split one more here, maybe 9—eight or nine apartments, depending on how we want to do it.

Community Benefits & Building the Sanctuary

Why would we—what’s the benefit of having apartments together? Being closer to other submitters is better; that’s one benefit out of it. Of course, the biggest benefit which I’m introducing is the return on investment, but it has other benefits as well: being closer to other submitters.

The other benefit is that on the rooftop, we could build what I call the Sanctuary. Let me—I don’t want to discuss it religiously too much, because God willing, I’ll do a topic about that another day. But why did I call this a sanctuary?

The reason why I’m calling this a sanctuary is because—by the way, it’s a term which I’m sort of inventing in English. It’s fine; Rashad used it. I don’t know if it has the same meaning in relation to where Mary stayed and prayed and stuff like that, but I’m just using this term. Let’s decide this is what the sanctuary is.

What’s the difference between a mosque and a sanctuary? The difference is that the land is not totally dedicated to God because it’s an apartment building, but the walls are dedicated to God. The walls and the internal space are dedicated to God. The reason why this cannot be fully a mosque is because if someone destroys it, it gets lost. If someone destroys the whole building, you don’t have a mosque anymore. But if someone destroys a mosque—let’s say the Kaaba or something—you still have a mosque because the place, the land there, is a mosque. Once a mosque, always a mosque. Here, it’s only a mosque as long as the building stands, which doesn’t really matter that much anymore because we’re close to the end of the world. What are the chances that a building, if it’s built correctly, is going to be destroyed before the end of the world, because the end of the world is not that far anyway? 200 years—what is it, like about 200 and something years? So basically, we’ve achieved a time where a sanctuary and a mosque practically are very similar, if not the same.

Here’s the idea: in the fourth floor, these people who live in this building can just climb to the fourth floor. Here’s an ablution area, another ablution area, two bathrooms, two washrooms, a shower area, a kitchen, and this is all what they call a terrace, whatever they call it. It’s basically an open area with a nice view, obviously. It’s similar—if anyone knows what a penthouse is, it’s kind of a building which has a yard on top, like a nice home on top of a building.

The idea is that the sanctuary is paid by the penalty zakat, but the rest of it is owned by the submitters who own this building collectively. Of course, they’ll own the apartments separately, but they can own these other areas collectively. I live right now in Canada in a similar type of building. We have a gym which is shared by everyone. Of course, it’s a big building, not small like this. So it’s kind of a shared area, and then everyone has their own apartments.

Imagine this terrace being just like a gym which everyone can use, but it’s not dedicated to God. However, this green area here would be the sanctuary. We’ll talk about the shape another day; I’m just introducing it as an investment.

Sanctuary Layout and Living in Harmony

The idea is we invest in it, and it’s usable. Basically, we dedicate it to God, and it’s usable by the submitters who live there.

Plus, the additional benefit of it is—by the way, this is if Qibla is in this direction. If Qibla is in the other direction, we can do it like this other case here. If Qibla is in the other direction, we can also make the building face the Qibla. But sometimes it’s not easy, because the road might be in a certain direction and things like that, so it might not be as easy.

This is the general idea: you go here, you could enter the sanctuary. It’s fine even if we use the word mosque, because again, in practice they are almost the same these days. They are not in theory the same, but in practice they’re almost the same. You can enter here, and then you can go through this door, go in the outside area, or you can go straight to the outside area.

Basically, the people who live here could set up tables here and have common meals, or they could drink coffee here and use it as a balcony or whatever, and an opportunity.

By the way, this enables the submitters to keep their privacy in the apartment, so they don’t have to go in each other’s apartment, knocking on the door, “Hey, how are you doing today? How are you feeling?” Submitters respect each other’s privacy. They just don’t go unannounced and things like that. Typically, of course, it depends on how close they are, but typically they respect the boundaries and the privacy of others. That’s why a shared area helps to be in contact and communicate with others in that shared area.

It’s partly a shared area, partly dedicated to God—let’s call it owned by God—and the other floors are private apartments. Let’s repent.

Legal Advantages of a Residential Sanctuary

Praise be to God. There is no other god except God.

Okay, so this is the idea of the Submitter’s Apartment Project. Oh, by the way, this is just one idea; we can do it differently. We can do it on the first floor. It has its advantages; it has disadvantages.

By the way, some advantages it has is we can avoid some legal problems, not loopholes. In countries like the US, quite often if you build—they don’t allow you to build a mosque in a residential area. If you build it in a commercial area, like they build the churches sometimes, it really doesn’t suit you, because people who live in a residential area cannot go to a commercial area five times a day. This is meant to be used five times a day typically, not like churches, which are used once a week; that’s different.

They have designed the cities in the US and Canada especially—partly in Europe as well, but not as much—where it kind of suits you to build a church, but not a mosque. Mosques are really supposed to be really close to the people where they can visit them often, not just once a week, but more than that. Of course, once a week is obligatory, but what I’m saying is not like the Christians, who kind of do it once a week and that’s it, and the rest of the time it’s closed.

Anyway, what I’m saying is this kind of avoids those problems, because you can build an apartment building, and it has a prayer area. No one can stop a prayer area; it’s just a gym. Legally, from the legal perspective, you can think of it as a gym.

Rental Affordability and Site Planning

Anyway, let me talk about the estimated prices. This is probably why I think it’s a good investment, part of why it’s a good investment.

I think we can build this apartment building. For people not to buy the apartment, they might be interested to rent the apartment. They might be interested to live there, but they don’t have the money, or they have other investments and they just want to live there. This is how cheap it would be to rent:

• Estimated monthly rent for the studio is €191.

• €315 for a one-bedroom apartment.

• €441 for a two-bedroom apartment.

• €483 for a three-bedroom apartment.

So even the rents are quite cheap.

Let me go to the next sheet. And this is how it would look, let’s say, in a lot. By the way, the idea is to buy two lots so that we can build another apartment, but without the mosque, without the sanctuary. Imagine having another apartment exactly like that or similar, and then we build it later. This enables us to sort of start even with a few submitters and then increase the number of apartments later. Plus, it allows us to sort of make it suitable to many types of lots.

This is an idealized way of thinking of it. Of course, not all lots look like this, but this lot, for example, the one I talked about, would be 650 square meters. And this other lot would be about 650 square meters, then we can build another apartment here. These are, let’s say, cars. If we have eight apartments, imagine eight cars here being parked outside. They can be parked outside to save money on not building garages.

Location Analysis: Why Kosovo?

Now, which location would enable us to do this? Because as you can see, it’s really cheap, cheap by both standards. Let me talk about location.

I went to ChatGPT, and I put pretty much the locations where submitters live, and I asked what a typical apartment price in euros per square meter is.

• If you build this apartment in Paris, it’s going to be $8,000 per square meter in Paris suburbs. Why suburbs? We don’t really want to be in the middle of people where we have to engage with disbelievers a lot. Plus, typically they might be cheaper in most regions of the world—suburbs are cheaper except for maybe some places in the US. So in Paris suburbs, we would have to have $8,000. This apartment, if we build it in Paris, it would cost eight times more.

• Accra is, as you can see, apartments are quite expensive: €1,800.

• Detroit: €1,600.

• Pristina, which is the capital of Kosovo: €1,500.

• Dhaka in Bangladesh: €1,300.

• Lipjan, which is a small city close to Pristina: 950 only.

Now, why is it that cheap? Again, it’s cheap only—there’s three factors.

1. There’s almost no immigrants because people don’t speak Albanian. But the submitters wouldn’t need to speak Albanian. We can live with one another, and if you want to go shopping once in a while, that’s probably all the English the other people need to know. So I think it’s doable. We’ve tried it with my wife; she came there for a few months. I think it’s doable. It requires some adjustment, but it’s doable.

2. The three reasons why it’s cheap—it’s not cheap because it’s bad. I’ve been all over the world. The quality of life—let me give an example. I’ve been, let’s say, north of UK. The apartments look worse than in Kosovo, like the building quality, the amount of windows, the space you have. But because it’s an English country, everyone wants to go there and they have better salaries, so that’s why they are more expensive. It’s not because they are better; it’s just because there’s higher demand. That’s one reason. The other reason is the language.

3. The third reason is the culture. In Kosovo, typically the dad will have a car, and the rest of the family doesn’t have a car—partly because they don’t have money, but partly the culture is just like that. Typically the head of the family, the dad, will have a car. Now, that pushes the rest of the family members to always want to live near the city where they can walk. So everyone wants to live, let’s say, in Pristina, in the capital, or in some big city, not in a smaller one.

However, living in a smaller city for submitters shouldn’t be a problem, because why? It’s not like we are going to meet non-submitters every day, or like we have to befriend them constantly or something like that. As long as we have each other, that’s kind of good enough. Yeah, we can befriend them for certain business things, but you get the point. Basically, what we want and what they want is different. So we can get more value for our money in a location where the disbelievers don’t want it as much.

Exploring Lipjan and Target Demographics

So who is this for? The idea is—let’s say this is a potential location. It’s just a thought; maybe I should go to Google Earth. Nothing special; I don’t have any memories from there. I don’t even know—I’ve been there once or twice, that’s all. Let’s go to Google Maps.

Okay, so the location is here, in Eastern Europe. It’s a place, by the way, there’s no wars right now, at least not right now. You can walk in the night and no one is going to say anything. It’s quite safe.

This is the capital of Kosovo; this is Lipjan. The airport is right here; it’s very close. That’s part of the idea, to have the airport close because people might want to travel back to their countries and things like that. The biggest mall in Kosovo is pretty much very close here: Pristina Mall. It has a few shops around, just a small town, a few apartment buildings.

If you visit it, I think you’ll see that life is reasonable. It’s not sanitary issues; I don’t think there’s big sanitary issues like sewage and stuff like that. Like in some countries, they have sewage, they have electricity, internet, all of that. So pretty much you get a Western life for a price which is three times cheaper, five times cheaper depending on where you live right now.

Who is it for? Who would be a suitable person to invest, or buy this apartment, or be part of constructing this apartment?

• Submitters who work online / Digital nomads: Any submitter who can afford to change the location without a significant detriment to himself or herself. If you have a job online, you can probably do this.

• Retired submitters: A lot of submitters today are young, but a lot of these people will eventually get old. They will quit their job, retire, have a pension. They can just go live with other submitters instead of staying alone somewhere where they have no real family.

• Submitters who already have a job nearby: This is typically for people in Kosovo. It’s a specific case; let’s not pay too much attention to it.

• Submitters buying a secondary vacation home: Some submitters actually do have money, a few of you, and they have more than one home. They can sell one of them and buy this.

• Submitters between jobs: Let’s say someone is bored of their job and they want to switch their job, and they want a few months or a year off where they want to reflect, or study for a new job, or something. They can use the opportunity to go and live there, and then they can probably rent instead of buying.

• Pure investors: Someone might buy it with their own money, likely build it, and then sell it to you 20% more expensive. It’s a good investment. Someone might want to invest like that. Let’s say someone cannot go and live there; they can build it for this price and sell it for that price if they have enough trust in the project.

Regarding payment: the second method is the post-construction payment method. You pay the post-construction price after the apartment is fully constructed and the keys are handed to you. Basically, you wait until it’s built and then you buy it, but again, it’s going to be more expensive like that.

Draft Ownership and Residency Rules

What else did I need to talk about? Okay, ownership. This is not that important at this stage, but I’m just going to go over so you sort of have an idea of how it’s going to happen.

Most apartments, especially in Western countries, have ownership rules because they want to know how the garbage rooms are going to be used, how the gym is going to be used. Here are the ownership rules for this apartment. This is a draft; it’s not the final version. We would have to do the final version with a lawyer.

1. Submitters and Spouses Only: Apartments are meant to be owned by submitters and potentially their spouses only. The reason why we will have to allow the spouses as well very likely is because in Kosovo, like in many Western countries, you cannot buy an apartment if you don’t involve your spouse as well. If you buy an apartment, it belongs to your spouse as well. Even when you go to buy, you have to have your spouse there if you’re married so that they can sign the deal when they buy it. Basically, you cannot buy it alone if you’re married; you have to have your spouse with you as well. Those are the rules in Kosovo, and it’s hard to avoid. It’s part of what we call the global forced behavior. Basically, you just cannot avoid it; it’s forced on you, and it is what it is. So we will, unfortunately, have to allow the spouses of non-submitters as well. But you can avoid other family members; that’s not forced. You don’t have to bring your dad or your mom if they’re non-submitters.

2. Reselling and Renting Constraints: You can sell or rent the apartment anytime you want, but you can sell or rent only to other submitters and their spouses. Basically, the apartment is dedicated to be used by submitters only and their spouses if they have a spouse, and it should stay like that for as long as almost all the people agree.

3. Minimum Rental Period: For safety reasons, you can only rent it out to people who are willing to rent for at least a year. Maybe six months—maybe we should change it to six months. The reason for that is that, unfortunately, not just with us, with most of religions online, what happens is it attracts mentally unstable people because people don’t see who they really are, how they live, what they do, how they dress, how they behave. You cannot see their real life. This really makes the mentally unstable people be attracted to online things which make them feel like they are part of a community, but they really are not. Because there’s a risk that online people will be like, “Oh, I want to go there, I just want to try it for a month,” typically if they have to pay for a year, they might change their mind. They’ll probably go there only if they are serious. So for safety reasons, we have to limit it to more serious people, not to anyone, so people don’t just come explore and then leave. It benefits the investors, of course; either you should be serious, or you cannot just go there, make all the furniture dirty, and then leave after two weeks.

4. Inheritance Procedures: If a submitter is open to non-submitters inheriting from them—let’s say someone dies or is about to die, and they are okay with their child who is not a submitter inheriting that apartment—the child cannot inherit the apartment, but they can inherit the money. The non-submitter can only get their inheritance in money after the sale of the apartment to a submitter. Now, because this is a forced sale, basically the person who owns the apartment says, “When I die, I want this apartment to be sold, and I want the money to be given to my son or daughter even if they are not submitters.” Some people might have that wish. It’s their wish. I probably wouldn’t do that, but some people might have that wish. It’s okay, it’s allowed, but I don’t think it’s a very good idea anyway. If people want to do that, what they can do is have it in their inheritance or in these rules when we buy it: where if someone inherits the apartment, they will have to sell it. Because it’s a forced sale, that means the price can be manipulated. People can be like, “Oh, if you want to buy it for this, otherwise I’m not going to sell it,” and things like that. That introduces an opportunity for unfairness. In that case, the price of the sale will be determined by an independent property evaluator who will try to estimate the market value of the apartment to the best of his or her ability—the market value at that time.

Exit Strategy, Voting Rules, and Selling the Property

Now, someone might say, “What if we build a building, we all go there, and we want to change our mind because the country is not as good as I thought? Maybe it’s kind of boring, we don’t want to live here anymore, I kind of want to leave. I’m still a submitter, but I want to go live in France or the UK.” It can happen like that.

Now, what if that happens? If there’s other submitters who can buy it, of course they would be interested to buy it. If there’s more submitters than today, they’d be very likely interested to buy it. However, let’s say we might build another building in another location, like Kazakhstan, or Canada, and maybe people don’t want to stay in Kosovo anymore. Whatever the reason is, there should be a solution for that.

In that case, if 85% of the people agree—let me explain why 85%. Submitters reach agreements with consensus, meaning everyone should agree. However, because of the global forced behavior, 30% of those decisions are basically just forced. Someone maybe is mentally not capable of deciding; someone is going to lose his job if he makes the right decision. About 30% of those decisions are forced. Because the democratic governments are always half good and half bad, that means that 30% is divided into 15% good and 15% bad, which means that we have to avoid that 15% which is bad. Basically, we don’t want that 15% of decisions to block all the other good decisions of the community. If we went with consensus, that all of us should agree, what could happen is one bad person can block the whole situation. They can say, “Oh, I don’t want to sell,” or maybe it doesn’t suit them, even though everyone is losing money. We want to avoid that situation. So with 85%, we can enable the rest of the people to move forward even if 15% of people don’t agree. It’s a practical way in today’s world of reaching consensus.

In the unlikely event that submitters want to sell the apartments to change location for any other reason and no other submitters are interested to buy them, they can sell all of them to non-submitters if 85% of the weighted votes agree.

What do I mean by weighted votes? Weighted votes means that if you own an apartment which is 100 square meters and the other person owns an apartment which is 50 square meters, your vote counts twice as much as the other vote. It’s not one person, one vote; the vote has as much value based on how much you own in that building. If you invested more, your vote should weigh more, like owning stocks in a company.

Voting should not be anonymous, first of all, because people should really speak their mind. If they don’t have the courage, then maybe they don’t deserve it. Voting should not be anonymous, and only the adult submitters have the right to vote, but not their non-submitter spouses or the children.

The submitters must follow the following procedure:

1. They must inform the congregation director of all the votes and what they voted for.

2. The congregation director sells the sanctuary and the terrace together. The sanctuary is the portion built by penalty zakat money—it was not built by the owners, it was built by the money which we collected as submitters. The terrace, however, is a shared area of the owners; it’s just a shared area. He would have to sell them together because no one would want to buy one without the other; they would want to build a restaurant there or make it a penthouse apartment.

3. The proportion of money from the sanctuary is rededicated again as penalty zakat. That’s why it’s a sanctuary: it can be sold. It’s not a masjid, which cannot be sold. The proportion of money from the sanctuary is rededicated again as penalty zakat in the cause of God to build other sanctuaries or masjids. It can only go there; it cannot be used for something else. The proportion of money from the terrace and the kitchen is distributed proportionally to the apartment owners depending on how big the apartment is. The value of the terrace and kitchen per square meter is 25% of that of the sanctuary—this is a standard building thing. Usually terraces cost 25% compared to the inside.

4. The submitters are then free to sell their own apartments to whomever they want at whatever price they can sell them for.

Basically, the idea is even if the idea doesn’t work, what we end up with is a building where we can sell apartments and we earn money. If it works, even better: people get a community, and then we can sort of replicate a similar idea in other places—in France, in the US, in Bangladesh.

One of the reasons why I thought we should continue with Kosovo is, first of all, it’s more in the saddle right now. However, the other reason is that actually that’s the only one we can afford to build. This sanctuary part here will cost about $50,000, which is going to be built by zakat money, God willing. We are approaching that amount of money the submitters have reported as a penalty zakat. That’s the only place we can afford; if we build it anywhere else, we cannot afford it. Either we build it soon and we can afford it, or we wait to do it in other places, which would mean we wait many more years.

Project Questionnaire and Closing Remarks

Now, to see whether people are interested, I prepared a questionnaire. I’m going to put this in the group chat, and only if you’re interested, you can go and fill it up at your own time.

If you’re interested in this idea to invest, or to rent, or to live, go and fill that questionnaire. Let me actually do mine first so that you know how it’s done.

Okay, so here’s the questionnaire: Submitters Apartment Project Questionnaire. If you’re not interested, don’t do it; you don’t have to do it.

• Name and Last Name: Vesa.

• Please choose which apartment type you are interested in: In this case, I’m interested in the two-bedroom or three-bedroom, because my wife is going to need an office to work online, and I might need an office as well.

• Please choose what is your intended use of the apartment: Use it as a primary home. (The other options are: use it as a secondary vacation home, use it as an investment property to rent to other submitters, or rent—meaning you become a tenant for at least a year.)

• What is your preferred method of payment? I would like to pay the pre-construction price. (Someone might like to pay the post-construction price; that’s also fine.)

• Please describe in detail the conditions which need to be fulfilled for you to fully commit in your purchase or rental of the apartment: Here, you’re just showing interest; you’re not committing or buying it. But what would it take for you to fully commit? Please explain here in lots of detail. For you, it’s really important to put this in detail so we don’t start building an apartment building with non-serious intentions. In my case, I would say my wife has to finalize her transfer of working from partial online work to fully online work. Once she does that, we are able to move.

• How likely is it that your conditions will be fulfilled before October 2027? Let’s set that as an ideal date. How likely is it that my wife will work fully online before this date? I would say 90%.

• Then I submit it.

This is all you have to fill if you’re interested. If you’re not interested, don’t do anything; it’s fine. You’re still a submitter, we love you, and all submitters are the same whether they have apartments together or not. That’s the most important part.

However, it’s a great opportunity for investment. I think people can win more money. How can they win money? If you have a cheaper apartment where you live with submitters, what you can do is take the rest of your money, which you would have used to buy an expensive house or an expensive apartment, and invest it in stocks. So you can earn more money.

If you live in Germany right now and you’re renting, you’ll save money on rent if you change your location. Or if you were intending to buy something in Germany that would be expensive, you’d rather live in Kosovo and then use all that money in stocks and earn more.

There are so many ways we can win from this. We can win from the sales, we can win from the initial price increase when others want to come there with the other apartment. We will have to buy both plots together; that’s also going to be an increase because everything has more value when there’s apartment buildings around.

Of course, the benefits of sharing a mosque together—we can have the retreats there, not paid hotels. Just the hotel money which we will have to pay for the retreat, God willing, next year is going to be 10,000–20,000. We can build with two or three of those retreats, talking just for the hotel. We can save a lot of money if we do it like this.

We’ll see. Initially, I’m just interested to see how much you are interested and what you’re interested in. If not enough people are interested, we can postpone it or modify it.

For those who have to do the contact prayer, do the contact prayer. The rest of you, peace be upon you.

 
Friday Sermon by: Alban Fejza, Online Congregation Director